To think bat surveys are a racket?

[cakehoover123]

The council says we need a bat survey before we can replace the roof of the dilapidated house we're buying - a house that is empty, listed, and leaking.

The house is quite likely to have bats in it, since it's in the countryside, empty and full of holes!

I sent floor plans and photos to an ecologist who said a "preliminary" survey would be £540. He didn't give an estimate for the full survey.

I replied to ask:

1. Could he estimate for the full survey?
2. Could we just go straight to the full survey, given that it's so likely there are bats?
3. Could we skip the survey, and just do mitigations, on the assumption there are bats?

He said:

1. £1200-£1800 estimate, but cost "could vary significantly" above that
2. No, the preliminary survey decides what later surveys are needed
3. No for a "whole raft of technical, practical and legal reasons", and the council's building consent most likely wouldn't even be legal if they gave it to us on that basis

Googling around, these costs seem pretty standard.

Now I am keen to look after bats, and keen that wildlife is protected, and would want to put bat boxes etc in even if there were no bats - but this is starting to feel like a racket.

Firstly, how can it be so difficult to say how much something costs before starting work? Secondly, why do we need to spend £2k+ on surveys, if we just agree to do mitigations? We can't not repair the roof - the house will fall down if we don't! So the only question really is how to mitigate.

Are bat surveys the racket they appear to be?

Or - perhaps some MN ecologists out there will know - are there good reasons why the system appears to be so opaque, expensive and bureaucratic?

They’re not a racket, no.
These guys have high levels of expertise and their time and knowledge needs to be paid for.

Oh god, yes please, please, @Malbecfan ! I am currently trying to work out how to PM you... 🙏

(Malbec is the only thing keeping me going through this!) 🍷😄

I utterly agree and respect that, @Swiftie1878 - the more research I do, the more I admire these people. It's just that the system at the moment isn't allowing for the fact that I have NO ROOF. 😱

any bats present will be coming out of hibernation now.

you could get a preliminary idea of how likely it is that you have some by doing your own mini-study - nowadays you can buy a basic diy kit that lets you make your own bat detector (£22 from Waterstones, or find it online):
https://www.waterstones.com/product/build-your-own-bat-detector-new/5060786540126?sv1=affiliate&sv_campaign_id=624709&awc=3787_1743839820_1635ddadfe24d1a3d78da1df48bca17b&utm_source=624709&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=Twenga+Solutions+CSS
that would at least give you an idea of whether or not an expensive full-scale survey might be needed further down the line...

in the meantime, shop around for other quotes and see if you can find someone you get on with better...

Thanks @Longtimelurkerfinallyposts . A lovely bat charity person came yesterday and could find no evidence of a bat. But this isn't enough for the official paperwork that would allow our roofer to continue.

It may very well be that we don't actually need a licence and he IS allowed to work on in these circumstances, but we're finding it impossible to get a response from the authority that would grant that permission, just a 'we'll get back to you in five weeks' message... Even going through the expense of a licence that we may not need - don't care, I would pay just to get it done - it would still require weeks and weeks of observation. Weeks and weeks without a roof, or sleep...

The issue is, they say you have to have this permission, but make it impossible to get. It's Kafkaesque.

It’s not - he said quite cheerfully he’s checking every pylon along the whole line, many many miles. One at a time no doubt, will keep him employed this year I suppose, and add a tenner on to everyone’s bill!
Maybe they are looking for a new pylon climbing Otter sub-species!

I mean that's all very well and good, but why does it have to mean that cancer patients have to live without a roof for indefinite periods of time?

Well, as I said @OneAmberFinch I am not defending the application of it all.

Well unfortunately the law doesn’t take into account circumstances. Yours are really unfortunate and I’m sorry you have to deal with this as wells But it can likely be sorted out reasonably quickly with a competent ecologist if you contact some as suggested. Have any of them got back to you ?

If it’s an obviously old building with a roof not in great shape a good roofer also shouldn’t touch it and should recommending a survey before they do.

But bats can and are found in pretty much any building so it’s hard for a non professional to say unless it’s something obvious like a barn that’s being re roofed.

Or a very wary of litigation client/employer.

Sorry I missed your post.

No authority will grant you “permission” that you don’t need a licence. They cannot. If it is not licensable as in no roost is present (anymore) then there is no permission to give as there is no offence ! This is not NRWs job to ascertain. It is an ecologists.

NRW will grant a licence IF there is the danger of an offence being committed.

You need to speak to an actual professional ecological consultant - That won’t take you weeks and weeks.

Get one out to assess the building and if it could likely still contain a roost or not. They may need to do further survey to ascertain this. If the roost and all possible places for one to be are gone then you may only need a method statement this can be sorted relatively quickly.

Thank you all - I don't want to cause dissent here and appreciate all your feedback, it really just helps to feel 'heard'. 🙂

I've had an amazing bat lady come out and she found no evidence of a bat, but it isn't as simple as that - she is scoping out the possibilities going forward, and is affiliated with a lovely ecology firm here, so those people are my heroes right now, fingers crossed.

The roofer is so leery of going to prison if he even says the word 'bat' that I wonder if he's had trouble before... 🙄

Anyway, further bulletins as events warrant. If nothing else, I'm meeting some lovely and impressive people through this - nature folk are the best, aren't they?! 😄

It’s really not as simple as that.
They are trained in the field. It’s a specialism

The reality is that the roof shouldn’t have been touched in the first place. A lot of old buildings have bats and it sounds like the building is a classic candidate.
OPs or anyones personal situation is irrelevant other than possibly getting things dealt with more speedily if specialists have the time.

Removing the roof first is not the fault of the system, or in fact bats that need protection.
There are no loopholes in avoiding the law.

We had a slightly similar issue, we just found a new roofer with less scruples.
I'm all for bats, but I'm not prepared to live in a house without a roof.

Were there bats?

Genuinely don't know. The first guy said there was evidence of bats and said we would have to use someone he recommended before proceeding. The work done at that stage was fairly minimal so paid him for this time then said we didn't wish to proceed.

The second guy said he was happy to do the work and if he didn't look for evidence of bats he wouldn't find any.

I don't think it takes a conspiracy theorist to believe some roofers might be looking to rip people off with unnecessary bat surveys and taking a kickback from referring them.

So the second guy basically said he’d turn a blind eye
if he didn’t look for evidence he wouldn’t find any

Hopefully for your sake the first guy won’t report you.
The fines are hefty and can include jail time.

Of note Ecologists are very unlikely to take back handers.

To be clear, I love bats and would never harm one - we were planning to put up some bat and nest boxes this year anyway, and we already cater to birds, hedgehogs and frogs... I'm just beefing because of the prospect of it taking a long time. But working on it!

Really, our roofer should have checked before taking all the tiles off - I hadn't even thought of this, but you'd think he'd have had experience...

So hey, at least I will now be able to pass this info on to anyone having roof work done and save them the heartache! The bat check should be Step One!

Wow.

To hell with the law as well then. Lovely.

Absolutely - ideally have a survey first rather than the roofer check as they could be putting themselves in hot water by checking IF they find anything.

Although realistically they are unlikely to be prosecuted. As Cloudysky has demonstrated people get away with breaking the law all the time.

New roof can have inbuilt access for bats.

FYI I too have never taken a kickback in my life. I don’t think I’ve ever been offered one either but I have heard of it happening.

Agree @BatSignal
and tbh it’s sometimes easy to spot just by taking a glass of wine out into the garden between March and November between dusk and dawn and waiting.

Its not completely 100% , but it’s a nice way to spend the evening

I used to do it until our crappy neighbours took the roof of their barn off during hibernation and killed all the bats.
There must have been 30/40 or so flying about my garden before
He tried to hide the remains of dead ones in his van before the ecologists turned up but was spotted.

Yes he was fined and given a suspended sentence ( wish they’d locked him up though )

Not a single bat here now!

That's heartbreaking, @Kandalama - bastards 🤬. We used to have some, and a glass of wine was indeed the perfect accompaniment to an evening's bat watching... But we didn't seem to get any the last couple of years, so maybe that's why I didn't think of it. We do have a regular sparrowhawk who treats our feeder like a pick'n'mix, and I sometimes hear an owl scuttling and screeching out there, so maybe that put them off...

@Orangemintcream , I've been told by several people that most roofers would, indeed, have just covered it up - so good point - survey first, then roofer, so you can accommodate in good time.

Yeah, I get your point. That’s why I just burn that stuff that looks like asbestos tiles in my garden. I haven’t got the for the money for all that survey work either 🤷‍♀️

Sarcasm ? ?